At Los Angeles International Airport two weeks ago, FBI agents arrested an Irish businessman they had spent a week tailing all over California's Silicon Valley, from the offices of two electronics manufacturers in Sunnyvale to a hotel in Mountain View and down a quiet cul-de-sac to a suburban house in San Jose. The technology exporter, according to court papers, had purchased sophisticated computer components in the U.S. to send to Russia through Ireland. He now stands to be charged in mid-February with "unlawful export of 'defense articles.'" U.S. officials point to this little-noticed case as one manifestation of a troubling reality: although the cold war is long over, Russia is fielding an army of spooks in the U.S. that is at least equal in number to the one deployed by the old, much larger Soviet Union.

Russia runs more than 100 known spies under official cover in the U.S., senior U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement officials say. And those are just the more easily spotted spies working under the classic guise of diplomat. An unknown number of so-called nocswho work under nonofficial cover as businessmen and -women, journalists or academicsundoubtedly expand the Russian spy force. "They're baaaaack," says a former senior U.S. intelligence official who worked against Moscow during the cold war. "They're busy as hell, but I don't think we've really got what it is that they're doing." The number of Russian spies in the U.S. is especially surprising, given that it was less than four years ago that the Bush Administration expelled 50 of them in retaliation for the humiliating discovery that FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Hanssen had been spying for Russia for 21 years.

In a high-level meeting late last year, officials tell TIME, the National Security Council instructed the FBI, CIA, State Department and other agencies to get a better handle on the Russian espionage threat. While the U.S. might like to eject suspect diplomats to force the Russians to send in their "rookies," as a U.S. official put it, Moscow would probably respond in kind, denting the CIA's corps in Russia.

As the FBI has remade itself in the wake of 9/11 into a counterterrorism agency, the bureau's long-standing counterintelligence mission has been bumped down a notch on the priority list. During this time, Russia has been among the U.S.'s rivals most aggressively exploiting the opening to build up its spying capabilities. Also, it has been using liberalized immigration rules for Russians, instituted after the cold war, to install nocs.

Officials say the Russians are after secrets about American military technology and hardware, dual-use technology such as the latest lasers, and the Administration's plans and intentions regarding the former Soviet states, China, the Middle East and U.S. energy policy, among other matters. Russia also wants to learn as much as possible about its biggest strategic worry: the U.S.'s ramped-up commitment to missile defense, which could eventually threaten Moscow's nuclear deterrent. Asked about the Russian spy surge, Russian embassy spokesman Yevgeniy Khorishko replied, "We do not comment on any of the issues concerning intelligence."

In addition to embassy-based spies, Russiaalong with China, Pakistan, Iran and any number of other countries, including U.S. alliesrelies on many hard-to-trace front companies, often run through third-party countries, to acquire secrets and dual-use technology. "We think there are thousands of these companies," a senior U.S. official said.

David Szady, the FBI's assistant director for counterintelligence, who is in charge of keeping tabs on foreign spies on U.S. soil, told TIME that in the next five years he wants to double the number of agents chasing spooks. Already, the FBI has placed counterespionage squads of at least seven agents in all 56 of its field division offices over the past year. What about the chance that damaging U.S. moles are helping Russia today? Says one U.S. senior intelligence official: "There's always evidence of another mole because there are always unexplained events. There are always unexplained losses. There are always enough dots that look strange."

Russian spies are nothing compared to the damage the russian "mafia" is doing in our country. They are everywhere, and are stealing everything that isn't nailed down. In particular, they are the driving force behind the explosion of auto theft in this country. I'm sure that they have their mitts in everything else. They have rights here, unlike they did in russia, and our country club prisons are a joke to them. They are the real threat, not these few spies.

That is why it is so foolish to allow certain people, like Hillary, Leahey, etc., access to our intelligence through committee assignments. If they can't pass a security check they should not be allowed access to classified info, politician or not.

7
posted on 01/31/2005 8:01:46 PM PST
by Mind-numbed Robot
(Not all things that need to be done need to be done by the government.)

If they're so concerned about the Russians maybe they ought to boot those two Commies in the Dept. of Homeland Security. Yvgeny Primakov was a KGB deneral and the ex-stasi head (I believe his name is Wolf). These people have no place in our government.

"If they're so concerned about the Russians maybe they ought to boot those two Commies in the Dept. of Homeland Security. Yvgeny Primakov was a KGB deneral and the ex-stasi head (I believe his name is Wolf). These people have no place in our government."

Thought you might be interested in the following...

Inside Story: World Report August, 1994

EAST GERMANY RISES AGAIN Copyright (c) 1994 by Inside Story Communications

Monday, November 23, 1992: A few minutes past midnight, in the German city of Mlln, firebombs are thrown into an apartment in which Turkish nationals live. A middle-aged woman, her ten-year-old granddaughter, and a 14-year-old girl die in the fire, while nine more people are injured.

A phone call declaring responsibility is made to the police, and ends with the salutation, "Heil Hitler." German authorities decide to take this neo-Nazi terrorist attack seriously, considering it a national security matter, and within hours the office of the federal prosecutor takes control of the investigation. Federal police declare the murder to have been "planned, approved and carefully prepared." According to the prosecutor's office, these "premeditated acts" were carried out not just by hotheaded racists, but by organized criminals who are "endangering the internal security of the German Federal Republic and seeking to liquidate, invalidate or undermine the basis of our constitution."1

German officials have good reason to worry. Some 270 neo-Nazi attacks had taken place during 1990, the year of German reunification; that number had exploded to 1,800 during 1992. Many of these violent acts have been directed at foreigners, including Turks brought in to offset a labor shortage.2

Since 1989, in fact, Germany has seen a general rise in terrorist activity. The Red Army Faction of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, for example, has taken responsibility for a wave of assassination of top German political officials-by shootings and spectacular bombings.3

This explosive wave of violence has taken most Germans by surprise. Such terrorism was always known to be a symptom of the Cold War, a form of "fifth column" warfare conducted by the Communist Bloc inside Western nations. The Baader-Meinhof Gang had functioned as an arm of the Stasi, the secret police agency of East Germany. However, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the "collapse" of Communism had allegedly ended the Stasi's very existence, as evidence by the public mobs that raided and destroyed Stasi headquarters in East Berlin. West German officials quickly followed up on information from the newly-opened Stasi files, rounding up the underground leaders of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Germany declared victory over terrorism.

The sudden revival of the Red Army Faction (RAF), after it had supposedly been disbanded, caught Western intelligence services off guard. The simultaneous rise in neo-Nazi violence was equally confusing. But a major clue in solving the mystery emerged during the neo-Nazi riots instigated in the port city of Rostock, located in eastern Germany, in 1992. The rioters had attacked and torched a hostel containing foreigners who sought asylum. Four key agitators, who had painstakingly organized the violence, were arrested in September; the startled German police quickly discovered that all four were members of the Stasi-which presumably no longer existed.

The ensuing investigation led to a report by Rudolf Seiters, Interior Minister of Germany and therefore in charge of all counter-terrorism efforts. Although the report itself was not released, an official spokesman revealed its conclusion: the Stasi, acting through its underground agents, had "plotted the riots to bring down democracy."4 In other words, the East German police organization was still functioning and was working to de-stabilize the new government of united Germany. This would also explain the resurgence of the RAF.

Informed members of German intelligence had no reason for surprise. They had long estimated that some 5,000 Stasi agents had already penetrated the West German government, but since the 1990 reunification only about 200 of those have surfaced. The "dismantling" of the Stasi was itself handled by the East Germans, who appointed Stasi agents to supervise the process. Many Stasi files have since disappeared while most of the rest are locked away, and all investigations of Stasi influence have been closed without major results.

But the 200 defectors have added even more unnerving facts to the story. The Stasi leadership apparently had advance warning of the German reunification as far back as 1986. At that time, thousands of additional agents were pre-positioned throughout East German institutions. Thus, when unification arrived in 1990, tens of thousands of Stasi agents were automatically incorporated into the government and political parties of united Germany. According to the defectors, these spies were told to act as "sleeper" agents until given orders at a later date. Other Stasi agents, meanwhile, hid vast stores of weapons for future use.

The defectors further revealed that the Soviet KGB had taken direct operational control over the invisible Stasi network, starting just a few months after the Stasi itself officially ended. These agents have since been controlled from the Soviet military bases still present in East Germany.5

And what has become of the investigations of the RAF and neo-Nazis? The German police unit GSG-9 finally managed, by 1992, to place an informant in the highest ranks of the Red Army. Their man was Klaus Steinmetz, a street leftist and petty criminal recruited after his arrest in the 1980s. In early 1992, agent Steinmetz established contact with RAF terrorist Birgit Hogefeld, long on Germany's wanted list. From there, Steinmetz contacted other RAF leaders. By March of 1993, he discovered plans to bomb a prison, but German intelligence did not wish to break Steinmetz's cover and therefore could not intervene. The explosion wiped out the prison, creating a $100 million repair bill.

Steinmetz again arranged to meet Hogefeld and another RAF member, Wolfgang Grams, at a train station in Bad Kleinen, a town in eastern Germany. This time the GSG-9 decided to make their arrests. Some 54 police officers descended on the train station during the June 27, 1993, meeting. A struggle and a furious gun battle followed, leaving Grams and one GSG-9 member dead.

Hostile political forces have since turned the event into a scandal. Steinmetz's name was revealed publicly, depriving German intelligence of their first major RAF informant in decades. And two of the GSG-9 agents from the raid have been accused of deliberately killing Grams after he was defenseless. Regardless of whether the charges are true, Interior Minister Seiters and head federal prosecutor Alexander von Stahl were forced to resign.6 In effect, German investigations of Stasi-organized terrorism are being crippled, with police morale under attack.

The increasing economic, political, and military unification of Europe no longer seems to imply a new European powerhouse. The sophisticated Stasi underground, and its hidden role in orchestrating the rising neo-Nazi and RAF violence, can be added to the accelerating problem of terrorism by the Irish Republican Army in Ireland and Great Britain, the Basque ETA in Spain, and the Kurdistan Worker's Party in Turkey. The bloody war between the Mafia and the Italian government does not help, nor do the strikes and labor violence in France. More ominously, the "former" Soviet Union and several nations of Eastern Europe are now in the process of joining the European Union and NATO in the full unification of Europe-a move that will soon bring Soviet troops directly into Western Europe.

The Soviets will soon be in a position to consolidate full Communist power in united Europe, particularly if they use the Stasi and other underground networks to launch an uncontrollable wave of terrorism. Given such anarchy, most Europeans would gladly welcome Soviet occupation forces to restore order.n

If they're so concerned about the Russians maybe they ought to boot those two Commies in the Dept. of Homeland Security. Yvgeny Primakov was a KGB deneral and the ex-stasi head (I believe his name is Wolf). These people have no place in our government.

I did a google search, and has there been firm confirmation that the Department of Homeland Security hired Markus "Mischa" Wolf? To me, that would be a far bigger scandal than simply paying Armstrong Williams to promote a program, and I hope that the report is not true. But Mr. Wolf would be in his 80s, and I have to admit to some skepticism on that ground alone.

Nobody says they work exclusively out of the office, or in the area where they are assigned. Do you have any idea what the population of former Soviet citizens is in the Portland metro area for example?

I am married to one, so I have a pretty good idea - it is closer to 200k than 100k. Let's just say I comprehend the Russian language a whole lot better than I ever let them be aware of! No they're not all spies of course. but there are some...never mind - you honestly do not want to know what I know.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...the world was a whole lot safer when there was a Soviet Union.

Why? They kept the eastern part of the world "in check", and we kept the Western part of the world in check. With their "draconian" system in place, it kept this hemisphere alot safer than what it is today....at least the Russian Mafia wasn't as rampant as it is today. And, we could keep "tabs" on their KGB agents a whole hell of a lot easier. They didn't have NOC's under the guise of "business people" roaming the streets in every major and mid sized city in the U.S.

The last two year's while I've been on vacation in North Carolina, I've noticed alot of Russians, Belarussians, and Ukrainians in the area's surrounding the Research Triangle(and I've seen at least one or two on EVERY trip I've made down to Raleigh in the past 3 years) and in Eastern North Carolina. Coincidently, they seem to be concentrated in the areas around...Fort Bragg, Seymour-Johnson A.F.B, Camp Lejeune, and Cherry Point M.C.A.S. and are working as retail "business people." Hmmm?

I used to be fluent in Russian back in my college and early military days, but am quite rusty at it now, but when I do happen to use it on my business trips to Raleigh, you should see the stunned look on the faces of these folks. I especially like to hear them make some comment about someone, or something, and then to see the look in their eyes when I start to laugh, or make a comment back to them in RUSSIAN! They just about "piss" on themselves...they usually stop communicating to each other in Russian too!

Dos Vedonya!

The Jackal

14
posted on 02/01/2005 1:42:46 AM PST
by Jackal007
("The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke)

To all: I can guarantee you, that for every "Sanctioned" agent operating under the guise of "diplomat", that there are AT LEAST 2-5 NOC's operating in the vicinity.

Just another valid argument for why we should NEVER lose our vigilance in the "spy" game. That's what happens EVERYTIME you have a "liberal" administration like that we had to endure during the Clinton years.

It didn't help that the Soviet Union went the way of the dinosaur either...we have this "altruistic" ignorance about us here in the U.S. We tend to think, well, there not our enemies anymore so we can "stand down" our intelligence networks. Well, the reality is, when you are the "Big Dog", EVERYONE is trying to knock you down! Period!

How do you think that the Chinese became the emerging economic power it is in such a short period of time? Because the lack of due dilligence on the part of the FBI and CIA under the Clinton administration basically handed them "the keys" to the car in technology based "systems" in the 90's!

15
posted on 02/01/2005 1:53:22 AM PST
by Jackal007
("The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke)

While the U.S. might like to eject suspect diplomats to force the Russians to send in their "rookies," as a U.S. official put it, Moscow would probably respond in kind, denting the CIA's corps in Russia.

This sentence gets to the real heart of the matter.

Lest we forget: we spy on them, too.

In fact, if you were to gather together all the people who act as spies, intelligence gatherers, espionage agents and support personnel for all the governments of the world  let alone the corporate operators, I doubt there is a convention town anywhere that could accommodate them all for a weekend.

So sure, we can complain about Russia spying on us, but I, for one, find such complaints to be the epitome of hypocrisy.

Besides, the Chinese are much more aggressive  and apparently more successful -- in their espionage activities in the U.S.

<< Russian spies are nothing compared to the damage the russian "mafia" is doing in our country. They are everywhere, and are stealing everything that isn't nailed down. In particular, they are the driving force behind the explosion of auto theft in this country. I'm sure that they have their mitts in everything else. They have rights here, unlike they did in russia, and our country club prisons are a joke to them. >>

And the incredibly high rate of illnesses Russians bring with them, including AIDS, pretty-well-incurable, drug-resistant, TB and hepatitis -- and the endemic alcoholism from which 60+% of Russian men die -- should be scaring the pants off someone or other among the Peter-Principled-persons who populate and pick up checks from the feral gummint's vast health, communicable-diseases and security bureaucracies.

18
posted on 02/01/2005 4:06:42 AM PST
by Brian Allen
(I fly and can therefore be envious of no man -- Per Adua Ad Astra!)

Lets not forget we have plenty of Arab spies running around DC, Israel spies on us too and so does Japan. Of course we have spies there too. I love these articles. As if we didn't do the same to them. I'd have to back hand CIA if they didn't, but don't expect that others won't do it to you to.

Pure BS. Welcome to the world of Sterotypes. On the UN's list of top alcohol consumers, Russia lists #12, America #19. Luxemburge, Ireland, Britian, Germany list as the top four.

Most Russian men die of the same thing that most American men died 20 years ago: heart attacks caused by lack of exercise, smoking and fatty foods. That is also changing.

As for TB, there is no rampent TB epidemics in Russia and before you can come into the US, you are usually check for all that as part of your Visa application. As for Aids, we have plenty of that on our own.

"Let's just say I comprehend the Russian language a whole lot better than I ever let them be aware of! No they're not all spies of course. but there are some...never mind - you honestly do not want to know what I know."

And gee, they wouldn't even think to look on a website like this and see your comment. Now you've done it, they'll be after you! Come on, reality time, if they are trained spies/sleeper agents/etc., they would not say anything in Russian, French, English, German, Italian, etc., within earshot of you. If you are "hearing things" they're probably screwing with you. Being married to a Russian woman you should understand their sense of humor.

"And the incredibly high rate of illnesses Russians bring with them, including AIDS, pretty-well-incurable, drug-resistant, TB and hepatitis -- and the endemic alcoholism from which 60+% of Russian men die -- should be scaring the pants off someone or other among the Peter-Principled-persons who populate and pick up checks from the feral gummint's vast health, communicable-diseases and security bureaucracies."

Wrong - people with those afflictions are not allowed to come to the US. Check out www.usembassy.ru and see the medical screening (using only Embassy approved and certified doctors) they have to go through.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.